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Who’s Going to Win March Madness 2017?

Vegas March Madness

March Madness odds makers use tons of data on the players and teams. But have they factored in the Chinese horoscope? We did! Have a look!

It happens every year. There’s a buzz in the air. Things go electric and, come the second week in March, one of the greatest phenomena in American sports kicks off two weeks of non-stop insanity. They call it March Madness. For the last 78 years, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has selected the 68 best college basketball teams from across the nation to battle it out for #1.

Of course, for college kids and graduates across the country, betting on who you think will come out on top at the end of the frenzy is a long-standing tradition. Thousands upon thousands of fans descend upon Las Vegas every year to participate in this thrilling ritual. Tens if not hundreds of thousands more bet in local pools, or online. The bookmakers nation-wide have a field day.

Setting the odds and making predictions on the 68 different teams is far from an exact science. On top of crunching mountains of data, setting the spread involves a fair bit of crystal ball gazing, fortune telling and, when it comes to some of those southern teams, no doubt a bit of good old fashion Voodoo magic. This year “artificial, artificial intelligence”, a sort of computer-crowd online group think known as “swarm intelligence” is even planning on weighing in (UNU Swarm not only successfully predicted the outcome of this year’s Super Bowl LI, it got the exact score!). But Swarm, like the bookies, still depends on human intelligence and our ability to factor in as much information as possible. In that light, we put together an infographic to calculate which teams and players are likely to have the most luck in this year’s March Madness, care of something the bookies may not have thought of… the Chinese Zodiac. Ah, those ancient Chinese secrets…Check it out before you lay this year’s bets!

John D. Gardner

John spent the last twenty years teaching advanced statistics at a community college before leaving to pursue his love of writing and strategy games. Combined with his extensive teaching experience, John has made it his mission to guide aspiring gamblers to their biggest wins.